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Story Saturday: "The Princess Trap"

"The Princess Trap"

Once upon a time, there was a princess who loved two things--eating and training with the royal guards. On the rare occasions that the kingdom had a festival, the royal seamstresses would struggle to create something flattering for the princess's unusual figure, but she didn't mind. She kept herself strong and healthy by sparring with her favorite knights and even won several matches against them. Since she came from a kingdom that often went to war, her parents didn't mind that she did not meet the dainty expectations of a princess.

One day, the king and queen decided to take their daughter on a royal vacation. Since the kingdom had been at peace for a while, they were starting to grow bored of the monotony. When the queen suggested the far-off island of Keye, an advisor warned her that there had been many rumors of princesses traveling to that island with their families over the years and never returning. This piqued the princess's interest. What had happened to all the other princesses who visited the island? Were they still alive? She had to know more. Determined to solve the mystery of Keye, the princess begged her parents to take her there. The king and queen were hesitant, but they knew that their daughter was strong and brave and not like other princesses, so they reluctantly agreed.

When they arrived on the island, the princess was disappointed. It looked just like any other island paradise that royals would travel to on vacation. It had singing birds, luxury cabins, and high-class amenities. There was no air of foreboding within its brightly colored leaves or warm sunlight. She decided to wander off and do some exploring while her parents were being pampered at the local spa. As she traipsed through a beautiful forest that was bursting with vibrant flowers of every color, the princess quickly lost track of time as the sun set, spreading a soft purple glow along the leafy path.

She found some delicious berries growing among the trees. Once she finished gorging on berries, she stored the ones that she didn't eat in a basket for later. As she found herself encased in the darkness of night, the princess noticed a faint light coming from across the forest. When she located the source of it, she found herself in a hidden glen that glittered with the light of pixies and unicorns. It looked like every princess's wildest fantasy. This princess was happy to find it for a different reason. She knew that this place was the cause of all the disappearances and had to get to the bottom of it.

Cautiously, she approached the glen. As she drew nearer, one of the unicorns walked up to her with its horn glowing, as unicorns are said to do when they find innocent princesses in the woods. She was almost close enough to pet the enchanted creature's muzzle when she found that her foot lost its grounding. The unicorn purred beckoningly when the princess noticed that she was standing right in front of a trap hole in the ground that was covered by leaves and flowers. The unicorn began jumping and neighing loudly, startling her until she slipped into the hole. Fortunately, she found that her stout body got stuck before she fell all the way in, giving her time to pull out her sword and plunge it into the ground to steady herself. In doing so, she accidentally grazed the unicorn's leg but found that the sword had no effect. She was struck with the realization that the unicorn, the pixies, and the entire glen were all just an illusion.

Using her sword as a lever, the princess squeezed herself back up out of the hole. She then called down into the hole and heard many bell-like voices in response. All of the missing princesses were down there! She found a long vine just outside the glen and lowered it for them to climb. However, the kidnapped princesses had grown weak during their time in the dark trap, so she pulled most them out herself one by one once they had a good grip on the vine. She then offered them all of the berries she had collected so that they might regain some of their strength. The girls began regaling each other with stories about how long they had been trapped there and how they would each find their way back to their home kingdoms.

An incessant screeching interrupted their merriment, and the next thing their rescuer knew, the escaped princesses all ran away to safety, leaving only her. An angry troll walked up to the stout princess with its eyes glowing bright yellow. She raised her sword unafraid of the troll. He revealed to her that he had been collecting princesses for many years and was very angry at her for releasing them. He tried to tempt her with all the food she could ever desire if she stayed with him, but from the state his other captives were in when she found them, the princess knew he was lying. She noticed a brightly glowing crystal just on the other side of the hole she escaped from. The troll tried to push her into it, but she parried his attack and smashed the crystal with her sword as hard as she could.

The glittering glen melted away around her along with the unicorns and pixies, revealing a desolate wasteland. The troll cried out in defeat, admitting that the gem was the only thing he had to lure in princesses, and now he would have nothing. The princess shook her head and told him that he was a coward, resorting to cheap tricks to get what he wanted. Maybe now he could find a more honorable path in his life. Satisfied with her success, the princess returned to her family and told them everything she had seen. She became a hero among her people and spent the rest of her days eating everything in sight and lived happily ever after.

Back around 2012, a friend of mine sent me a press release about how Disney was making a new princess show about a little girl from a poor village who becomes a princess overnight when her mother marries the king. The endearing image of the little girl on the press release instantly caught my attention with her unique reddish-brown curls, playful expression, and gorgeous lavender dress that was dripping with pearl accents. Something about this description and image got me so excited for the series that I got to work right away on making a grown-up sized cosplay of Sofia's elegant gown. The series premiered on Disney Junior with a TV special called Once Upon a Princess in which Sofia received her legendary Amulet of Avalor and sang about her insecurities for her future life as a princess heroine in the song "Not Ready To Be a Princess." I loved her instantly. Over the next six years, she took me on a four season-long journey filled with Disney Princesses, fairies, mermaid…

The internet has been buzzing about Kingdom Hearts III finally getting a release date after fifteen long years of anticipation. Unless it gets delayed again, we will be able to catch up with Sora, Donald, and Goofy as they travel through the realms of various Disney movies on January 29th, 2019. There have been a couple of trailers dropped over the last few days revealing footage from Frozen, Tangled, Toy Story, Monsters Inc., Hercules, and Pirates of the Caribbean. For me, the biggest announcement came from the latter half of last night's trailer in which Larxene of Organization XIII remarked that Elsa might be one of the new seven pure hearts that they needed for their latest quest. Anyone who has played the first game knows that this is a reference to the Princesses of Heart, a select group of Disney Princesses who had their chance to become video game royalty when they got captured by Maleficent in an attempt to use their pure hearts to open the Door to Darkness. My biggest pe…

We all had lots of fun playing with princess dolls as kids and brushing their hair until it became ratty and tangled. For those of us who are older, there has is the option of purchasing pricier collectible dolls that are made with finer details in their hair and clothes and come with their own stands for display purposes. While princesses have never exactly been lacking in options for collectible dolls, the Disney Princess Designer Collection that was revealed at the D23 Expo in 2011 was the start of something special. Each princess had her own designer dress that looked like it came straight off a modern-day runway. The collection was released alongside lithographs, cards, mugs, and other paraphernalia featuring beautiful matching artwork. The dolls themselves weren't sculpted from your typical Barbie mold. They had fully articulated wrist and elbow joints, salon quality hair that stayed perfectly in place, bigger painted eyes, and long realistic eyelashes that you could actuall…

In 2008, the Philippines released a mermaid princess telenovela that was based on a popular graphic novel by Mars Ravelo in 1952. Dyesebel is loosely based on the story of "The Little Mermaid" with a few distinct differences. It was Dyesebel's mother, Queen Lucia, who first fell in love with a human and left the underwater world of Sirenea to be with him, sacrificing her memories of her life as a mermaid in the process. Dyesebel was born on land, but because of her tail, her mother returned her to the sea, entrusting her to her best friend, Banak, to raise her. Her human father, Tino, was murdered by humans who believed that mermaids were bad luck. Unaware of the circumstances of her birth, Dyesebel grew up curious about the human world until one day, she fell in love with a human and was doomed to follow in her mother's footsteps. The 2008 adaptation of Dyesebel is performed in the native Filipino language, Tagalog, but I was able to watch it with English subtitles …

If you're one of the five people on Earth who still hasn't seen the new Wreck-It Ralph 2 trailer that dropped this morning, I'm here to break it down for you. The trailer featured roughly the first half of a scene in which all of the living voice actresses for the Disney Princesses reprised their roles as Vanellope snuck into their secret internet headquarters that was presented at the D23 Expo last year. A screenshot released last week previewed the scene with Ariel missing, but now we see that she was just off-screen combing her hair with her favorite dinglehopper in a blinged out version of pink tea dress along with lots more animation of other the princesses in their oddly disproportionate new CGI style animation. Let's take a look.

For starters, it's a bit odd how Ariel and Cinderella have swapped the levels of bling on their ballgowns. In the 1950 animated movie, Cinderella's dress appeared to have made from a lightweight silvery-white fabric emblazoned w…

The internet went a little crazy when Entertainment Weekly released Disney's first promo photos of the fully costumed actors from their upcoming Aladdin remake last week. Many were disappointed with what they saw, which unfortunately tends to be the case for live-action remakes. For instance, Aladdin's signature purple vest was changed to red, making it closer to the Broadway version of the show. He was also given a relatively nice shirt underneath, which is more than a little confusing for those of us who remember how poor he was in the original film. Will Smith as the Genie looked a little too much like a normal human instead of a mystical blue entity, but apparently that's still coming. Princess fans were most excited to see previews of Jasmine's wardrobe. In terms of quantity, the internet did not disappoint. We now have images of three of Jasmine's looks that will be featured in the movie as well as a peek at her new handmaiden.

In my "Little Mermaid" origins post, I mentioned that there were three live-action movies in the works based on the beloved Hans Christian Andersen tale. Since then, a few announcements have been made about all three of these movies. One of them has a theatrical release date, and it's sooner than you might think. The circus-themed indie movie that's had a trailer out for several years now is coming to select AMC theaters on August 17th. That's in two months! I wish I could be more excited about it, but the plot looks a lot closer to the 2006 tongue-in-cheek teen mermaid movie Aquamarine than the fairy tale that it's named after. The trailer focuses on how a little girl's belief in mermaids has the potential to save the aquatic heroine who is held captive in a tank at a carnival. I've been feeling indifferent about this adaptation ever since the first trailer was released, but it's nice to know that I will have the option to see it on the big scree…

Sofia the First, everyone's favorite princess-in-training, has met every official Disney Princess that existed when her show began with the sole exception of Pocahontas. The power of her purple amulet granted her the ability to summon famous princesses whenever she was in trouble. Technically, she never met Anna either, but the episode "Olaf and the Tale of Miss Nettle" implied that she was supposed to meet her but got Olaf instead because her amulet was on the fritz. About a year ago, her amulet turned pink and granted her new powers. It now sends her to help princesses, meaning that the chances of her meeting Pocahontas at this point are virtually nonexistent. Why did they acknowledge every other princess movie except this one? Actually, they did acknowledge the 1995 animated classic in an episode of Sofia, but it was very subtle.

In the 2015 episode of Sofia the First, "The Secret Library," Sofia discovers a hidden passageway beneath her castle where a boat …